well think of weaving the adventures of Aeneas and Hudibras into one poem as of writing such a motley piece of mirth and sorrow.” Sidney’s and Addison’s principles would have condemned about half the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. As to the chronicle-history play, Ben Jonson, who was a classicist writing in a romantic age, had his fling at those who with “some few foot and half-foot words fight over York and Lancaster’s long jars.” I do not know that any other nation possesses anything quite like this series of English kings by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bale, Peele, Ford, and many others, which taken together cover nearly four centuries of English history. You know that the Duke of Marlboro said that all he knew of English history he had learned from Shakespeare’s plays; and these big, patriotic military dramas must have given a sort of historical education to the audiences of their time. The material, to be sure, was much of it epic rather than properly dramatic, and in the hands of inferior artists it remained lumpy and shockingly crude. To obtain comic relief, the playwrights sandwiched in between the serious parts, scenes of horseplay, buffoonery, and farce, which had little to do with the history. But in the hands of a great artist, all this was reduced to harmony. Henry IV, Part I, is not only a great literary work, but a first-class acting play. The tragedy is very high tragedy and the Falstaff scenes very broad comedy, but they are blended so skilfully that each heightens the effect of the other without disturbing the unity of impression. As to the romantic melodrama or tragedy of blood, the Elizabethans had a strong appetite for sensation, and many of their most powerful plays were of this description: Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine,” Shakespeare’s “Lear,” Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Maid’s Tragedy,” Middleton’s “Changeling,” Webster’s “Duchess of Malfi,” and scores of others, which employ what has been called solution by massacre, and whose stage in the fifth act is as bloody as a shambles. Even in the best of these, great art is required to reconcile the nerves of the modern reader to the numerous killings. In the extreme examples of the type, like “Titus Andronicus” (doubtfully Shakespeare’s), Marlowe’s “Jew of Malta,” or the old “Spanish Tragedy,” or Cyril Tourneur’s “Revenger’s Tragedy,” the theme is steeped so deeply in horrors and monstrosities, that it passes over into farce. For the great defect of Elizabethan drama is excess, extravagance. In very few plays outside of Shakespeare do we find that naturalness, that restraint, decorum and moderation which is a part of the highest and finest art. Too many of the plots and situations are fantastically improbable: too many of the passions and characters strained and exaggerated, though life and vigor are seldom wanting. This is seen in their comedies as well as in their tragedies. Thus, Ben Jonson, an admirable comic artist, ranking next, I think, after